Interesting stuff on Sagarin. Ohio St. and UCLA seem to be the teams to beat this year, literally. They are the only teams to have played 6 teams in the top 50, and both teams are 1-5 against those teams. But the Bruins have only played 9 games, so that leaves them with the #1 schedule while OSU is at #13 after knocking off 14 games with an 8-6 record. UConn and OSU are the only teams to play 4 games against top 25 teams, with UConn undefeated and OSU at 1-3.
UConn is at #37 for SOS and likely will be around the top 50 through the regular season, though they would be at least in the top 5 at that point for any SOS built around games against top 25 opponents. And it is such a joy as teams move close to their conference slates to see three top 10-20 teams battling it out for the most silly bad SOS's with Oklahoma St, Baylor, and Arkansas on each others' heels at #326, #327, and #328 respectably among 355 teams. And the AAC is the #5 conference again by Simple Average (not the standard sorted Central Mean that Sags uses to snit the AAC), and that is a fact that has to be a head-shaker considering how many experts here and abroad damn the AAC as pathetically bad.
And it does make you wonder if UConn is kind of the black-swan program-buster for Sagarin at this point, as even after a game won so handily and one that Sags had them losing in the pre-game stats, the Huskies would seemingly be predicted to win a nail-biter by 4 points if the teams were to play again at Cameron today. UConn is outside of the bounds of the rating scales that Sags works off of, whatever they be, and just doesn't have the flexibility to deal with a team like UConn. Speaking of which, I wish Jim Sukup would update the explanatory info for Sags since it no longer corresponds with current ratings names. Possibly though the idea is to remain obscure and mysterious.
